


House That Built Them

by EdgarAllenPoet



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Memories, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen, Kid Taako and Lup, No Spoilers, Returning Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 05:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18147527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: " “Somebody lives in Auntie’s house?” he bit, and she shook her head slowly.  It couldn’t be the same place. That world had been destroyed. Everything there had been destroyed.  The similarities were striking, but it couldn’t be the same place. "





	House That Built Them

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert

The twins didn’t ever expect to find the place again.  They’d been so young when they’d left-- certainly too young to have been going off on their own.  That hadn’t been their choice, but it hadn’t been their aunt’s either. Neither of them remembered the day their parents died with any clarity-- or if they did they didn’t tell the other-- but they both remembered meeting their Auntie.  They day the orphanage handed them over to a nice elf with long white hair and ancient eyes. Looking back on it, she hadn’t been elderly the way they’d suspected at the time, older but not  _ old _ .  There were a lot of things they didn’t realize in childhood. 

 

Living with her was the best their childhoods had ever been.  She taught them everything-- reading and writing, cooking, gardening, the fundamentals of magic.  She taught them to be brave and kind and loyal. She bought Lup her first dress, taught them both a lot about loving themselves and standing up for each other. 

 

She never taught them the way to town, though, nor did she teach them the way to come back.  They were small and didn’t pay attention to such things, so when things went south and the world turned dark, when she sent them on their way and told them to  _ run _ , they had no way of making their way back.  

 

Years spent under her care, and they never bothered to learn the address.  Never even bothered to learn her  _ name _ . 

 

They didn’t think they’d ever make their way back.  They took her lessons and her blessings, and they learned to cook better and shoot spells from the hip, and they became braver and stronger and more loyal to each other than should even be possible.  Childhood faded into adolescents into adulthood, and they didn’t get any kinder, not for a long while. That was a lesson to be learned from someone else. 

 

But they weren’t ever supposed to make their way back.  Especially after the end of the world. Their world. There should have been nothing to go back to. 

 

This cycle and this world had civilization, something Taako was increasingly thankful for after several cycles of  _ nothing _ .  He was out, Magnus at his side, the two of them tromping through the forest.  They followed a map Davenport had given them, were heeding warnings Barry had written in the margins about dangers and poisons and monsters and such.  The forest was thick, the underbrush biting their ankles and snagging their clothes. They were having a bad day, lost and tired, feet aching and eyes weary from squinting through the green maze before them.

 

“What’s that?” Magnus asked, picking up pace and trotting ahead.  Probably nothing,  _ again _ .  The past three “that’s” that Magnus had “seen” had turned out to be boulders and trees and piles of dirt, while Taako hadn’t seen any “that’s” whatsoever their entire time out.  Apparently cha’boy was rolling straight 3’s in perception. 

 

He followed Magnus, dragging his feet and complaining loudly that if it was another  _ rock _ he was going to be  _ sorry _ .  But then the brush gave way to a clearing, weeds snagging his ankle and sending him stumbling into the open space.  He bumped right into Magnus, caught his balance, and stared with a furrowed brow at the tiny cabin before them. 

 

“I know this place…” he said, mumbling, and he drew his wand as he crept closer. 

 

“You  _ do? _ ” Magnus asked.  “ _ How? _ ” 

 

Taako wasn’t sure.  He didn’t necessarily recognize the place, so much as he knew he’d seen it before.  The ground felt familiar. The air smelt the same. He  _ knew _ this place.  He had a vivid memory-- deja vu smacking him out of nowhere and nearly sending him stumbling-- of sprinting back to the house with bare feet and tiny legs, screaming his head off, while Lup chased after him, a poor old bullfrog clutched in her hands.  It knocked the breath out of him. 

 

A hand caught the crook of Taako’s elbow and tugged him back as he snuck closer to the porch steps.  “Taako, wait, what if it’s a trap?” Magnus asked. It probably was. It had to be. There was no way… he couldn’t be sure….

 

He had to ask Lup.  

That need turned frantic, and Taako told Magnus to ‘mark it on the map’ before turning and sprinting back out of the clearing.  His legs were longer and they moved faster, and Taako didn’t run unless he was running  _ from _ something, but  _ this _ was an emergency. 

 

“Where are you going!?” Magnus shouted, and Taako could barely hear him charging through the forest after him over the sound of blood pounding in his ears.  It was a long run-- several miles, and Taako was out of breath and drained of energy by the time they reached the ship again. That didn’t stop him from running inside, across the deck, down the stairs-- throwing himself through space-- and the first person he ran into was Lup. 

 

He plowed into her, let her take his weight and compensate.  “You--” he gasped, “You have to-- come with…. You have to come with me.  I found-- I found something!” 

 

He swallowed air like he was drowning for it, found himself pushed into a chair and someone else putting a glass of water into his hand.  He drank it greedily as Magnus came stumbling in, out of breath, sweaty, and pissed. He mopped his face on his shirt and gasped, “What the  _ fuck _ ?”

 

He waved off questions about injury and emergency, grabbing Lup’s hand and tugging himself up.  “You have to come with me,” he said, “I need you to see something.” 

 

“What are you talking about, bubbuleh?” 

“It looks just like home,” he said, and the two met eyes for a long moment, until both came to understand.  

 

Lup narrowed her eyes, stepped back a little, and said, “You’re sure?” 

 

“I’m not,” he answered.  “I need you to see it.” 

Lup deliberated for another long moment, ignoring all the questions the rest of the crew threw their way, and nodding in finality.  “Let’s go,” she said. She held her hand out for the map and Magnus gave it over with minimal grumbling. She looked it over, nodded again, and said, “We’ll be back before dark.” 

 

Nobody tried to stop them. 

 

The walk back was long and frustrating with a destination in mind that seemed so far off.  He swore every time his toe tripped on a stump or a thorn snagged his ankle. It was spa day that night, he decided.  He was taking the world’s longest bath and nobody could stop him. Lup leaned in close over his shoulder and peered at the map, not saying much of anything.  The two walked the miles in silence, until Taako slowed to a stop and Lup hooked her chin over his shoulder. 

 

“This the place?” she asked. They could barely see it through the woods yet, but Taako felt it tugging at something in his chest.  Lup could feel her brother’s anxiety rolling off of him, and she took a deep breath before stepping around him and closer to the edge of the trees. 

 

The first thing she saw was children.  A little boy, half-elf, just a few years past infancy was toddling along while an older girl trailed after him, picking up sticks and stones as they went.  She chucked the sticks into the forest and pocketed the stones, reaching down every so often to steady her brother with a hand on the back of his tunic when he toddled too close to tipping over.  Around the side of the house, Lup could hear the sounds of someone chopping wood. 

 

“Somebody lives here,” she whispered, and Taako slipped in beside her, peeking around a tree and squinting at the children with ears flattened against his head. 

 

“Somebody lives in Auntie’s house?” he bit, and she shook her head slowly.  It couldn’t be the same place. That world had been destroyed. Everything there had been destroyed.  The similarities were striking, but it couldn’t be the same place. 

 

“C’mon, let’s get closer,” Taako said, then slipped out of her grasp and began creeping further towards the edge of the forest.  

 

“ _ Wait _ !” she hissed at him, and was promptly ignored.  She sighed heavily, stomped once, and followed after him.  Taako was  _ not _ as stealthy as he thought he was, in Lup’s opinion.  In Taako’s opinion, the line between when Lup would charge into a situation and when she would hang back was a precarious one that he still failed to understand, even with the lives they shared.

 

They weren’t even to the clearing when the children screamed.  The older girl scooped her brother up out of the dirt and ran on twiggy legs back to the house, screaming,  _ “Mama! Mama!” _ all the way.  And in that moment, Lup was hit with that same deja vu Taako felt earlier.  It clenched something deep in her chest. She trotted forward and caught her brother by the arm. 

 

“ _ Nice going, goofus _ ,” she whispered harshly, and he barely spared the second to narrow her eyes before marching forward, Lup hot on his trail.  

 

They’d made it halfway through the yard when the front door opened, showing a woman with a handkerchief tied around her hair and an apron around her waist, arms covered to the elbow in baking flour, boots haphazardly tugged on with white thumb prints decorating the tops.  Seconds later, a second woman came around the edge of the house, small hand axe over her shoulder and harsh gaze. 

 

Taako stopped midstep, and Lup paused beside him, slipping her arm in front of his own so that if they had to run, she could shove him to go first.  

 

Handaxe lady raised an eyebrow, while the woman in the door set a hand on the head of the little girl who was hiding behind her hip.  Neither said anything, and Taako wasn’t speaking either, so Lup straightened her posture and started forward, hands in clear sight and obviously empty.  Her wand was tucked into the bun on the back of her head. Taako’s was hidden away in his pocket. 

 

“What is your business here?” the woman on the porch asked, while the handaxe woman leaned against the edge of the cabin, keeping watch.  If they didn’t do it then, they wouldn’t do it at all-- Lup knew this. She felt her nerve starting to diminish, so she grabbed onto the ribbon ends and dragged it back as she crept a bit closer, hands still raised and empty. 

 

“Just visiting,” she said, and she tried to remember what Magnus had said about rustic hospitality.  She said, “Ma’am, this question might be crazy, but are you the first family to live here?” 

 

“We found the place, actually,” the handaxe woman replied, voice a higher register than the twins had been expecting.  “Empty and abandoned, years abandoned, the dust was thick but it was obviously well-loved before our finding.” 

 

“ _ Lup... _ ” Taako whispered, and Lup paid him no mind. 

 

She nodded, and she said, “This place is very familiar to us,” as she walked steadily forward.  The women simply watched, made no move to stop them. “We mean no harm, honest,” she said at the foot of the porch steps, and that’s when it caught her eye.  

 

She smiled sadly, disbelief nearly overwhelming her.  She felt Taako freeze next to her when he noticed the same thing, and she gestured down to a set of tiny purple handprints, barry juice permanently staining the old wood of the front porch from nearly half a century ago.  Those handprints were made barely weeks into living there, when Auntie had enlisted their help in harvesting fruit from the orchard and set them on the porch to clean it. Taako had stained nearly his whole self purple in the process, and they didn’t notice until too late that the juice on his hands had become permanently ingrained in the wood.  They’d been petrified, Taako ready to bolt, and when Auntie came out and saw, Lup was quick to leap to her feet and yell that it was her fault, it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t do it, don’t  _ touch him _ . 

 

She remembered the sad look that passed through Auntie’s eyes.  She remembered slowly learning to trust her. 

 

She felt tears well in her throat and she cleared it before speaking, still gesturing to the stain, and said, “I know you don’t know us from Adam, but those handprints on the front step are mine.” 

 

And the woman in the doorway, with her own children hanging from her hip and her bread dough going flat in the kitchen, looked down at the young pair before her.  For reasons she couldn’t explain, she looked at the young adults and saw a change, saw them four feet tall and petrified, the sister standing in front of her brother protectively just as she was now, the two of them clad in ragged clothes and barefoot, the brother in a wizard’s hat several sizes too big.  He wore it still, today, and it fit now, and the woman wasn’t sure why she knew that. 

 

Taako spoke this time, knowing his sister wasn’t going to, and he said, “If we could walk around, I swear we’ll leave.  Won’t take nothin’, we just….” The woman couldn’t have known how big of an offer that was from the young man, but she felt it all the same. 

 

She said, “I think ya’ll better come on inside.” 

 

“May…” the other woman said from her place in the yard, hesitation in her voice. 

 

“These young’uns don’t mean us any ill will,” the woman in the doorway replied with an air of finality, and she shepherded her children inside while waving them both in after them.  Lup went first, hand tangled firmly in Taako’s as she pulled him along after her. They tiptoed inside, ears laid back suspiciously and eyes darting around. Taako stayed tucked close to his sister’s elbow. 

 

The main room was different, different furniture and belongings, but the same wear in the walls.  The notch marks in the doorway measured them for three years, and Taako ran his fingertips over them, smiling at the year when Lup grew half an inch taller than him.  He’d thrown a fit over it, feeling betrayed that she grew without him and they were no longer identical. He chuckled at the memory and followed Lup deeper inside. 

 

She spoke to the woman as the went, explaining things as they looked at them.  “That scorch mark there? First time trying to summon flame. Auntie started our magic lessons after that.  That little bedroom up the stairs? Used to lay in bed for hours and just marvel at the fact that we had one. Auntie never knew what to do with us.  She got us two beds but we always insisted we share one.  Learned to play violin up there too.” 

 

“She said her father built this place.  This house is… well, gods, this house is centuries old….” 

 

“Can I get ya’ll some water?” 

 

Taako nodded for the both of them while Lup continued to lead him around.  She pointed out the memory of that time Auntie set them both in the corner, telling them they’d remain there until they apologized for eating all of the jam she’d kept canned in the cellar in a single afternoon.  Lup had given up and apologized within an hour, but Taako had crossed his little arms and sat himself there until well past bedtime, when Auntie had finally let him go with a promise to never do it again, even if he  _ wasn’t _ sorry. 

 

The kitchen counters were the same, as was the table.  Out the back window Taako pointed out an old junipberry tree, and Lup told the woman how their Auntie’s favorite cat was buried under there.  How they’d planted it from a sapling barely taller than they had been. 

 

“Your aunt sounds like a wonderful woman,” the woman said, after watching the young elves creep their way through her living room, kitchen, peek their heads into bedrooms and point out memories in every crevice.  They never lost physical contact with each other, never relaxed enough to let their ears up, and she wondered if they’d always been this way and what had come along and hurt them. 

 

“She was,” Taako said.

 

The woman asked after her, whether they’d moved or where she’d gone.  Lup’s smile grew sad again as she explained that they didn’t know, they’d had to leave when they were very young, they hadn’t been back since. 

 

“Our aunt was the only stable part of our childhood,” she explained, and Taako reached a hand up to tug his hat on a little bit tighter, like he was scared to lose it. “She was…. She was everything.”  Her voice broke a little, and the woman watched as her brother tugged her back a bit tighter. 

 

He said, “We need to get going.” 

 

She sent them on their way with refilled water pouches and a handful of fruit from the orchard that still grew out back.  She hugged them both, and the boy stiffened in her arms while his sister practically melted into them. They bid goodbye, something sad in both of their voices, and after they’d gone and she glanced out her window into the woods and saw them standing just inside it, wrapped tightly around each other.  

 

“This should be impossible,” Taako said to Lup, who laughed wetly where her face was buried in his shoulder. 

 

“We always knew Auntie was magic,” she said.  

 

The others asked questions when they returned, but the twins didn’t have any words to use for explanations.  They stayed tucked close to each other, remnant of their first few months on this journey before they really started to trust the others, when it had been the Twins and the Others, and that had been that.  There was something younger about them, an air of youth different from the one that accompanied their overflowing energy and pranks and quick tempers and loud laughter. This something younger was raw and open, and they didn’t ask after it.  They left it be, but when looking at Lup and Taako curled around each other in the common room of the Starblaster, they all agreed that they could almost see elves barely four foot tall, clad in ratty clothes and barefoot, tiny and scared as they were forced to leave home.


End file.
